


Clans of Shift and Phase

by NightmareAmpersand



Category: Original Work
Genre: 21W, Brief Sexual Content, Dying Earth, F/F, F/M, FWFL, Fifty Words Fifty Lines, Post-Apocalypse, Twenty-One Words, Violence, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 21:26:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5759440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightmareAmpersand/pseuds/NightmareAmpersand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Earth is rocked one day in the near future by the Shift storms, gigantic pockets of energy that swallows land and anything that happens to be there at the time.  As those poisoned by the Shift begin to die, the children of those survivors realize that they must build a civilization of their own.  Thus come the Clans, and with clans comes war, and with war comes the advantage and disadvantage of resources.  One such resource, the one resource that is the highest prize, are the few children born as Shift Mages.  This land is dangerous, but never boring.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Collectibles (The Vsevolod Sink)

**Author's Note:**

> The stories I'll post here were completed as part of my ongoing Twenty-One Words and Fifty Words, Fifty Lines challenges. They're more or less in a chronological order, but I will explain when the timeline starts skipping around. I'd like to continue this series, though, and make it into a cohesive story, so this particular story will probably be migrated into that work in the future.

With little thought to it, Ana picked up the grubby little cloth doll and stuffed it into her hip pouch for later. She had no doubt the others would ask her why in an impatient and aggravated tone. After all, there were far more productive things that could fill that same spot, items that could ensure survival or information to give them an advantage. She didn’t doubt the truth of their statements, but she couldn’t quite explain it herself. These random items seemed special to her, regardless of their actual value or use. After a time, it was more compulsion than anything. 

Sensing rather than seeing movement on her perif, she hurried to dive into a dark corner of the closet she’d been examining, drawing her Keber Mk. 3 pistol in mid-jump. Just as she situated herself in a crouch she heard the unknown assailant enter. Heart thundering in her ears, she wondered which clan had found her hiding spot. She was so certain this sector had been cleared for the day and would be safe for scavenging. The footsteps drew closer to her hiding spot, and she leveled the gun at the broken wooden door, aiming for a midsection target if she couldn’t get a headshot.

“Ana…come on out. It’s just me.” A hand encased in a leather gauntlet and polymer armguard reached in. Breathing a sigh of relief, she thumbed the safety back on her pistol and took the offered hand, stepping out to face an armored figure rendered androgynous by the bulky polymer plates. A helmet fully encased the head, with three optic sensors, softly glowing in acid green.

“Navi…what are you doing here? I figured you’d be on standby for the day.” Navi pulled off her helmet, her military-regulation short hair sticking up every which way with no thought to taming it.

“Esra sent me to check on you. You’ve been gone for hours.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize…I’m sorry. I got a good haul from scavenging today, though,” she said, nodding briefly to the heavy pack strapped to her back.

“And your ‘collectibles’?” Navi did sound exasperated, but Ana could detect a hint of laughter with it. Sheepishly, she reached into her hip pouch and withdrew the doll she’d picked up. Navi took it and examined it from all angle. “Well, not what I’d pictured you picking up next, but you certainly could have done worse.”

“Is it time to go back now?” Ana asked, retrieving the doll and stowing it away again. 

“Yeah…there are other clans converging on the area. Seven Star is leading, but Fox & Rabbit wasn’t too far behind them. Gen also picked up com activity from Noise Neighbour and Teacher of Pain.”

“Four clans? There must be something really valuable here if they’re all willing to risk Vsevolod Sink.”

“Why is Vsevolod a risk now? Did another clan move in?”

“No…the city Shifted again. I came here to gather some data on the Shift. The tremors opened up a few new passages, but the negative Shift ratio has been increasing exponentially since then. Vsevolod has only a few hours at best before it disappears completely.” 

“You came out here for something like that? Esra is gonna tan your hide when we get back for putting yourself at so much risk.” The floor underneath them wobbled slightly in a Shift aftershock, doing little more than knocking a stray curio off its’ perch in a decorative alcove. “And speaking of risk, I need to get you out of here before this place gets too risky for extraction.” Shoving her helmet back in place over her head, Navi squatted with her back facing Ana. “Climb onto my back. We can move faster this way.” She quickly scrambled on, used to this type of transportation, and braced herself when Navi leapt out of a hole in the wall to land on the broken street several stories down, her polymer augment shocks and cybernetic enhancements absorbing the impact. From there, she immediately took off at speeds well beyond normal human capacity.

While Navi navigated the streets and buildings, Ana slipped on her trace visor and applied a modified set of algorithms, using the information Navi gave her earlier. With it she could see satcom imaging of the four clans coming into the area, and used their plotted convergence point to pinpoint an area for a deep anomaly scan, much the same way she would find any number of marked items. After a moment she gasped, not believing what she was picking up.

“You all right? You tensed up there,” Navi inquired.

“Navi, turn left now and drop into the sinkhole about 240 meters along!” She obeyed without any hesitation, as Ana usually had a good reason for disrupting a set plan. She dropped into the hole and they landed about 60 meters underground, pulverizing an unlucky rusted bicycle into dust. Once she’d stopped moving, Ana slipped off her perch and took off into the darkness, Navi following close behind.

“Ana, what is it? I’ve never seen you so worked up about something before.” Either Ana didn’t hear or didn’t want to hear the question, following the data trail on the HUD of her visor. The hole eventually led to a dead end, the remnants of an apartment building buried ages ago. Ignoring another aftershock, Ana scrambled through a window, looked around for a moment, then reached into a pile of what seemed like assorted junk and scrap to pull out a small metal box, no bigger than a briefcase. She struggled with it for a moment, then handed it plaintively to Navi.

“It’s locked…we need what’s inside here. Can you get it open?” Enhanced strength servos made the task laughably easy, and she hand it back to Ana. She watched intently as Ana opened it, curious as to what kind of treasure it might contain, and was surprised and a little disappointed when she pulled out a single book page, curling and yellowed with age.

“That’s it? Don’t tell me we came down here for one of your collectible hunches.”

“No…I swear, this is good and it will give us one of the best advantages we could ever have. It might be enough to end this stupid ‘clan war’ for good.” Incredulously, Navi snatched the page from Ana’s hand and looked at it back to front, side to side, and upside-down.

“What do you mean? It looks like this page came from a high-school textbook.”

“It’s not what it’s about, but what it shows in the words. You see…” They both cut off their arguing at the unmistakable sound of a huge group of people dropping into the sinkhole. The other clans had arrived and knew exactly what they were looking for. “Oh no…we’re trapped. Navi, we can’t let them get this page!”

Navi quickly weighed a few options in her head before deciding on the most expedient solution. Picking up Ana, she unhooked a microtherm grenade from her belt, released the catch, and threw it with deadly precision through the window they’d entered through. She barely had enough time to curl around Ana in a protective ball when it detonated right in front of the advancing clans. The initial shockwave floored them, disintegrating the ones closest to the front, and the main detonation took out not only half the group, but caused an abrupt cave-in as well. However, it was also the last straw for the unstable sector. With the shrieking of thousands of metal girders and the basso rumble of concrete and brick, Vsevolod collapsed around them. After the initial blast Navi scooped up Ana and ran at breakneck speed for the one last opening she saw. Using several buildings in mid-collapse as platforms, they emerged under a charcoal grey sky near the outskirts of the area. Unable to resist the curiosity, Navi stopped and turned to look at the vanishing sector. Within a minute, the only sign that hinted at the sector’s existence was the acres of freshly disturbed earth. The sector, along with the four clans in pursuit, had Shifted and were gone forever.


	2. Recovery (The Endless Shore)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place a short while after "Collectibles", likely within a few months. Since I'm still feeling out this universe, each chapter is from the point of view of a different character.

Laya held the dropper steady, adding the acid in carefully timed drops to the solution she’d been trying to peptise for over an hour. If she could perfect this research, the hydrostatic anomaly they’d discovered could lead to a lightweight perisarcal armor that would be a thousand times more useful than the chain-and-leather throwbacks the scavengers were forced to use, as they couldn’t move as well in the soldiers’ bulky polymer armor plates. She was close, she knew it, but a series of loud noises from the front room preceding the lab shattered her narrow focus and a quick glance at the manometer showed the delicate balance was lost and that it was rapidly vaporizing. The automatic ventilative process kicked on seconds later, loud enough to completely drown out her acidic cursing in three different languages. She had been so damn close, and now she was facing four days to reinstall the process and an additional three to reestablish the hydrostatic anomaly…a week to return to the point she’d been at not five minutes ago.

Intent on giving whomever decided to barge their way into her lab a ticket to the ninth circle of hell, Laya slammed open the adjoining door to be greeted by Esra and Navi, their leader and a soldier who was not unlike the avenging Brünhilde of Norse mythology, standing opposite each other over one of the examination tables and arguing in voices loud enough to wake the dead. She saw the shape of a body on the table and, now curious as to whom could be letharsising quietly between the two, stepped forward and unceremoniously (and rather ineffectively) shoved Navi aside as she saw that it was Ana on the table, Navi’s partner and the only Trace Mage their clan had. 

“Ana…damnit, what did you do to her?!” she inquired angrily even as she automatically hooked up a biosensor and opened a shunt in Ana’s skull that alleviated a buildup of Shift-Trace humors, a certain sign she’d overtaxed with her Trace Visor again. Trace Mages were insanely powerful, but the tradeoff came in the form of migraines and hemorrhagic strokes caused by the backlash of the Trace and Shift energies and often the cause of death for most Trace Mages at an early age; fortunately, Ana had proved to be incredibly reviviscent and while this still worried Laya, it was nowhere near hopeless.

Esra, their enigmatic half-Trace leader whose name was undoubtedly a hypocorism for something unpronounceable with human tongues and jaws, glared at Navi as if she were wondering the same thing before turning that formidable glare on Laya. “The Monsieur dropped her at our DMZ about five minutes ago, just like this.” The Monsieur, or Mister if they didn’t feel like being fancy, was an enigmatic and unsocializing freelancer and trader, one of the few given access to all the clans with no threat and the only male Esra allowed anywhere near their clan. That alone was testament enough to the man’s ability to cuitle…Esra was protective of her girls. Laya was certain this little exchange wasn’t entirely boonless, though, and she wondered what Esra would be forced to pay out later.

“And you can lay the fuck off me, Esra…I told you, the last time I saw her was when we cannibalized the truck we got from Fox & Rabbit. I dropped her off at the mess hall while I was taking Nolan’s ass to ‘reeducation’.” Laya rolled her eyes at Navi’s demoded expression for the torture and games the soldiers enjoyed putting their male captives through…honestly, drugging them was a thousand times easier and faster than playing like a cat with a mouse. “I was at the fjord for about two hours. Me and Thelma went to the mess hall aftger, and EX-10 said Ana had turned in her plate only about twenty minutes prior. You know as well as I do that the gate only cycles the selector on a ten minute delay…there’s no way Ana could’ve gotten through the gate in such a short time, let alone get into enough trouble for Mister to get her out of.”

“Unless she activated her Trace and manipulated the data,” Laya interjected, preferring an undigressive approach to storytelling. “She gets out, overtaxes her Trace, and Mister grabs her…damn idiot probably found another hydrosulfide pocket or inane diary entry or…”

“She is NOT an idiot, and you will respect her!” Laya’s ears rang as her breathing was cut off by that gorilla’s huge hand lifting her up by the neck, though she oddly noticed that Navi used a hyacinth-scented lotion, likely a present from Ana.

“Navi…” Ana, finally roused by the measures Laya took in preobservation, was able to get Navi to release her grip with a weak voice and feather-light touch. Laya crumpled to a heap on the floor, coughing, and was helped up by Esra who was muttering something in Trace about Navi not being worth the price of her dowry…or something like that, as Trace could almost never get precise translations. Laya could simply call her a paiker and leave it at that. 

“So, I’m assuming that boil on the ass of humanity wanted something from my lab this time?” Laya asked Esra in an undertone, as Esra would have normally kept to her office to bawl out Navi on her lack of supervision.

“Astute…Monsieur said he needed an ager that you developed using the temporal Shift algorithm.” He was well-informed, at least…she developed that only a couple of weeks ago from Ana’s observation of the synergism between two sectors who overlapped their Shifts, one ending the moment a second one began. Still, she’d kept that little experiment a secret from everyone except Ana and Esra, so something fishy was definitely going on if Mister had that information.

“Sure…it’s in Vault VIII using the ‘Lionheart’ cipher.” Esra nodded and moved away, and Laya straightened out a pant leg unnecessarily before pushing her way between Ana and Navi, asserting her right as a physician. 

“Your neck looks like a pahoehoe…sorry about that,” Ana whispered, trasing the darkening bruises from Navi’s oversized paw. Laya merely smiled and placed Ana’s hand back on the table, wishing she could insulate her from Navi’s brutish thuggery…still, somehow, she and Navi worked undeniably well together. Pulling back her last vestiges of professionalism, Laya began a careful catechization to rule out any other potential complications from the Trace overuse. After ignoring Navi’s threats in Chamorro while she examined Ana, she helped her to finally sit up.

“Ana, you need to stop being so goddam careless with the Trace visor,” Laya gently admonished her. “I’ve told you that it’s not safe to go past the farmer without an escort.” Truthfully, she was all for vetoing anything outside the compound proper with or without an escort, but she rarely had the final say in anything.

“Just call me next time, Ana,” Navi jumped in, always looking to undercut Laya’s standing with Ana. Laya wasn’t certain what the intelligent Ana saw in Navi, who was such a stereotypical jarhead that her daily routine could be used as hypnopaedia for the soldier recruits. Still, she knew better than to ask…the last time a girl with a crush asked Ana a similar question, Ana asked one of her own: ‘Would you like to see the Earth from a gigameter away?’

“Laya, Laya, hurry…it’s time for Tulli’s accouchement!” Nina, her lead assistant with a suety voice (thanks to Seven Star’s ‘experimentation’ on her), was one of the few who could effectively pull Laya from anything else…she rarely interrupted for meaningless drivel or trivial tasks that she could handle herself. Tulli’s birth had to be handled carefully…not only was it high-risk, but it would also be a boy, and while Laya respected many child development models (she practically worshiped Gesell), others in their clan firmly believed that any boys needed to be given away or ‘disposed’ of as soon as possible. Fortunately, Esra understood that children couldn’t exactly be held in the same regard as teens or adults, so her directorship introduced special provisions for male children that were born to the clan or were found by them in raids and scavenges.

“Great…I’ll be right there, as soon as I can tell Esra to schematized whatever procedure Mister wants to do.”

“Go, Laya…I’ll tell Esra when she gets back.” Navi, though a constant source of hemorrhoidal-like pains in Laya’s ass, was at least straightforward when it came to clan business, and she knew the message would be passed along accurately.

“Fine…make sure you also tell her to give him the isallotherm projections too. They’re on the supercalender.” Not caring if she understood, Laya ran off to take care of far more worrisome duties than her failure of a love life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a Fifty Words, Fifty Lines entry, which is why some sentances are incredibly awkward. 
> 
> Here's the list: peptise, perisarcal, manometer, ventilative, reinstall, Brünhilde, letharsising, alleviated, reviviscent, hypocorism, monsieur, unsocializing, cuitle, boonless, cannibalized, Nolan, demoded, fjord, Thelma, selector, undigressive, hydrosulfide, hyacinth, preobservation, dowry, paiker, boil, ager, synergism, fishy, lionheart, pant, pahoehoe, insulate, catechization, Chamorro, goddam, farmer, vetoing, undercut, hypnopaedia, gigameter, accouchement, suety, gesell, directorship, schematize, hemorrhoidal, isallotherm, supercalender


	3. Reunion (The DMZ)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place immediately after "Recovery".

Esra walked out of the compound, firmly clutching a locked case in both hands. The two guards at the west DMZ Shift Gate gave her surprised salutes…she rarely ventured outside the compound, and rarer still without a soldier to escort. She nodded to them and waited patiently for the gate to cycle through the seector, a safety measure that ensured that no one could pass through without proper clearance…no one except Ana, apparently. She was still bothered by the events, even after leaving the lab. Ana escaping through the security measures undetected was hardly worrisome; she somehow managed to do so all the time, especially when she got the inexplicable urge to find her ‘collectables’ out in the scavengable zones. Navi’s violent reaction to Laya’s insult of Ana was also unsurprising. Esra made certain that such overprotective tendancies were installed in Navi when Ana selected her as her guardian. No, nothing about that little scene itself bothered her overmuch; it was the events that led to the scene in the lab.

The Monsieur.

“Commander Esra, the gate is ready now,” one of the girls said politely.

“Thank you Andi, Akane. Please keep up the good work.” They both saluted enthusiastically, beyond pleased that she remembered them personally. She stepped confidently forward and walked through the gate, a localized Shift anomaly, and found herself at the DMZ that stretched through hundreds of miles of wasteland and lay roughly east to west. This and other DMZs existed from one of the few treaties the clans unanimously worked out near the start of the Clan Wars. Even back then the clans realized that they needed safe routes for trade and talks, where they had to allow peaceful trave or risk universal extinction. The effect created a buffer of one mile in any direction from a clan’s stronghold and a wide trail that led across the entire continent. This treaty was rarely broken for the simple fact that this world was harsh enough to begin with. Clans had no reason to raid each other’s strongholds when they often died out on their own from conflict in the cities, disease, famine, and area Shift anomalies that swallowed up everything and everyone within.

She walked confidently through the DMZ, looking at the horizon. Another storm was brewing in the distance, which meant another area would soon be destabilized. She worried that there would soon be nothing left of this world, war or not. It was difficult to survive when nature itself created these literal death zones, and soon nature would take everything they had. No more life. No more Earth. Who cared about stupid squabbles when you weren’t even needed for the process of systemic death?

Her mind elsewhere, she did not notice the small crater created by erosion and unexpectedly stumbled into it. She lost her balance, teetering unsteadily before pitching forward, unbalanced further by the case she carried. Before she hit dirt and stone, though, her progress was halted by a pair of gloved hands which caught her and pulled her out, balancing her on firm ground once again.

“There you are, dear Esra, falling for me yet again.” The masculine voice that spoke could only belong to one person…her old friend Lysim, whom everyone else knew as The Monsieur.

“Save it, Lysim,” she bit out, embarrassed by her moment of perceived weakness. He merely chuckled, not even giving her the dignity of letting go of her arms. “Let’s not draw this out. Spies are everywhere around here.”

“So? It’s not as if they could understand us.” This was true. They were speaking in Trace, a vocalization of the data trails that permeated this world which no one without Trace heritage could even understand, let alone speak.

“I’ve got your ager,” she said, deftly sidestepping his comment. “This will be sufficient payment for bringing back Ana?”

“You could say that.” He took the case from her and immediately set it on the ground at his side, not even glancing at it. “But you also know the real reason I’m here, don’t you.” Not waiting for a reply, Lysim grabbed Esra around her waist and pulled her flush against him. She instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck, willingly reciprocating the embrace. He deftly engaged in a single kiss before squeezing her tightly, his face buried in her neck and hair.

“Really, Lysim, has it been such a long time?” She meant the question to sound nonchalant, but it was impossible to hid the breathy tone that indicated just how much he affected her.

“Eleven years, Esra,” he whispered. “I’d say it’s been far too long.”

“Then what do you plan to do about it?”

“This.” With a smooth movement he scooped up the case he’d set beside him and proceeded to teleport the both of them away. The localized shift made her slightly nauseous but even that was swiftly forgotten as he pushed her back against a wall, dropping the case with a clatter, and kissing her hungrily and forcefully as his hands quickly negotiated the straps that held her clothing on. She was doing the same, and within half a minute they were both nude and ready for each other. He lifted her slightly and allowed her to lock her legs behind his back before pushing into her, hilting himself with one forceful push. They only paused a moment to mutually enjoy the sensation before he proceeded to outright fuck her, driving into hard and fast with the singular goal of getting them both off quickly. Barely a minute later they both achieved that goal, Esra’s orgasm hitting her like an atomic explosion and Lysim’s less than a moment behind.

They stayed like that for a little while, foreheads touching and catching their breath, enjoying the closeness they shared. Soon enough, Lysim pulled away and led them through the darkened room, his easy familiarity with the layout no doubt attributed to the fact that his was his current hideout. Reaching a bed, he lay down and pulled her over him, their lovemaking beginning again, this time as slow and tender as their first session had been explosive and rushed. This lasted for hours, each trying to get their full of the other when they knew their need was unquenchable, and only stopped when they were forced to concede to their physical limits and their bodies demanded rest.

In these quiet times, though, Esra still could not sleep, even physically exhausted and comforted by Lysim’s warm body curling around her own, holding her tightly to him while he slept. It was always in those times that her mind foced her to think, forced her to remember all those things she kept hidden away to preserve some semblance of sanity. She was far older than anyone guessed and remembered this world’s ancient past. She remembered when the land they currently occupied was a series of farming and dairy communities in Illinois. She and Lysim had been born and raised in the same village. They spent the better part of their elementary school years terrorizing the principal with their elaborate pranks.

Then, one absolutely beautiful fall day in their junior year of high school, the first Shift happened. Their school was near the center of the anomaly, but they’d played hooky that day to simply be with each other. The school and everyone in it were gone. Over the next few days most of the rest of the village died off from something akin to radiation poisoning. She, Lysim, and a handful of others at the fringes of the event survived, but not unaffected. They began to see strange electrical impulses all around them, what they now called ‘data streams’. Some could manipulate these energies. Others could hear the rhythms and speak back. They changed, gaining an odd ever-present aura and never seeming to age. Some committed suicide. As society continued to decline with the increase of Shift events, some saw the advantage to gather others, impress them with their ‘powers’, and form the clans. Now, over two centuries after that first event, they were still divided and the world was dying. Many of the first half-Trace were gone, dead or simply disappeared. She and Lysim were the only two remaining in this area. For years they’d worked in their own ways to try and gather whichever half-Trace survived, but with very little success.

“Esra, you know that thinking about the past gets us nowhere in the future,” Lysim murmured sleepily as his fingers began to trace soft patterns over her stomach.

“Perhaps,” she sighed. “However, thinking about the future hasn’t gotten us too far either.”

“Then perhaps we should think about now,” he countered, pulling her onto her back to lay over her. She smiled at that…they would go again soon, but it was still too soon for even their unflagging stamina. Still, the contact felt wonderful.

“While we’re waiting, perhaps you could tell me why Ana risked another stroke to go see you?” She kept the question light, but she knew immediately that the situation was far more serious when he abruptly tensed. 

“I…damn, I knew you’d ask, but…”

“What is it?” she asked, now feeling nervous herself. In response he rolled off of her and pulled himself off the bed, activating a fungal glow-lamp on his way across the single-room home he’d chosen. She sat up, sheet pooling at her waist, and watched him quietly.

“You know that Ana has an odd affinity for certain objects, right?”

“Of course. Her ‘collectables’ are a running joke at the base. Several of the girls even got together to build a few display cases for her finds.”

“Has anyone ever tried to find a relationship between the things she picks up?” he was only half-visible, rummaging in a makeshift storage closet for something.

“I’ve looked into it. So has Laya and Irina and most of the girls with any sort of Trace affinity. But the objects just seem to be random…one day a motor from an ancient moped, next a thermal scan from an old hotel, and then an old thesis on neoclassical art styles. No links. I’ve even asked her, and she says that she doesn’t even know why she’s drawn to them, just that she is.”

“Well…she visited me because of something she found on her last trip.” He strode back to the bed holding an old, yellowed sheet of paper with faded handwriting on it. He sat next to her and handed her the sheet to read, but his eyes never met her, a sign that he knew that this would bother her and he wasn’t happy with it. The sheet looked like it came from a journal, one of the expensive ones you could get at a bookstore. One long paragraph ran the length of the page, and it was clear that the writing continued both before and after this page. With little else to glean from simple observation, she began to read.

_…can’t tell if they’re going crazy or if it’s just me, not that it makes a difference. I don’t need to be paranoid to know they’re plotting against me. The Kitchen…I led them here, I’ve kept them safe from the others, and they have the nerve to turn against me! It’s Leon, or Lysim, or whatever his latest fashionable name he’s going by…something stupid and French, I bet…I know it is, and I can’t stand it! Walked brazenly in here with not a thought to our safety. Had a brat strapped to his chest, too. Wonder where he stole this one from. Not enough human left in him to reproduce. I’ve tried for so long, and I can’t! He talked to me, said he wanted to help, said if he knew where the problem stems from that we could fix it. I fixed him. Stole the brat, ran to the storeroom, locked us in. She would have been mine. Stupid, stupid Leek! Made me trust him and let him in, and he tied me up! Gave the brat back to Lysim! Locked me in this room, no doors, no windows, nothing. But the Data calls, and the Shift is coming, and as soon as it does I’ll use it to…_

Esra’s hands trembled as she set the sheet down in her lap. After swallowing a few times, she managed to croak out one word.

“Amy?” She had founded The Kitchen and had been half-Trace herself, but she was lost thirteen years ago. The Kitchen lost their stronghold and over half their clan members in a Shift anomaly back then, and the surviving members had been absorbed into other clans. More than that, though, Amy had been a neighbor and classmate of theirs. She had an obsession with Lysim and a deep-seated jealously that Esra had won his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Twenty-One Words entry.
> 
> Word List: sign, eleven, storm, than, balance, another, needed, dear, hand, effort, human, broken, belong, paragraph, principal, atomic, Illinois, west, motor, stems, both


	4. Survive (Main Street Crossroads)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place way before the previous chapters, near the start of the Shift crisis. This is mostly just to flesh out a few things in this universe, such as the start of the Clans and the existance of those affected by Trace.
> 
> Also, I've kind of visualized this as a first- or third-person shooter, hence the chapters having specific 'map' names.

Dian knew the ins and outs of the destroyed town like the back of her hand. She had grown up here, lived here since she was nothing more than a runt of a girl who still had parents. Her mother died long ago, long enough that she didn’t remember anything about her. Her father stayed with her, teaching her everything she’d need to know in order to survive once he was gone. That was always a given, that he would die in the not-too-distant future and she would have no one that she could rely on. It was such a matter of fact that when she woke up one day to find his sleeping bag cold and empty and a note telling her that it was time for him to leave, she thought nothing of it and continued her day as usual, roaming the town, scavenging what few scraps were left of whatever was valuable, and hiding from the roving bands of other scavengers and their bodyguards. Day in, day out…the actual things she did were varied, but the results were always the same. Survive.

Today she was nestled just inside a torn and broken marquee just above a movie theatre, wedged in with the fluorescent bulbs that her father said had made the sign shine like a star, drawing people to it so they could get away from reality for a while. The sign was sturdy enough still, but it was a good thing she was small and light from chronic malnutrition, a disease her father had fretted over but could do nothing about. She’d already completed her scavenging for the day, stealing food from the packs of one of the scavenging bands who didn’t know that leaving their belongings outside while they were searching a building accessed through a crawlway was not a very smart idea. Water, jerky, large pieces of cloth she could use to make new clothing and a blanket…it was a very good haul for her, and with hunger and thirst satiated she could hide for the rest of the day without worry. These rare times of idleness weren’t unproductive, either. Sitting where she was, she had a clear view of the street and anyone who passed through. Her father always said that gathering information was never a useless activity and that, unlike with material items, the information they could carry was only limited by the size of the memory she could keep. She could remember a lot, almost everything, with perfect clarity. She knew when people passed through if they’d been here before or not. She knew the colors and insignia they wore and what they meant. She also remembered everything her father had told her. Those memories were dear, and she still went over them again and again, the edges softening with age but never in danger of being lost.

History was important to her father. “To know where everything had come from is to know where it is going in the future,” as he always said, and she took it to heart. The city they inhabited used to be in northern Mississippi which resided within artificial boundaries they called the United States of America. Larger than a village but smaller than a town, her father recalled growing up in this place fondly. He told her of many strange things: how he’d been educated with many other children in a building called a school, attended a place called church every week to supplicate to a being called God, and earned currency in the form of paper and electronic data by attending a program called work (not work as she knew it, certainly, for her work called for digging through all sorts of debris for the items that ensured her survival), and had met her mother in the movie theatre she now took residence in. They went on many ‘dates’ there, a useless activity that really accomplished nothing other than spending currency and being together. They had not been together long, he said, when the world changed. The Shift-storms had appeared one day, starting in the northern part of the world and spreading down and out until the world started being affected. These storms took everything they touched and left behind nothing but dead earth. Many people died shortly after these storms happened in areas they were close to. Her father survived. So did she. Her mother had been affected but held on long enough to give birth to her. The people who roamed the streets scavenging and protecting, they’d all survived too, or had been born after the storms started. 

Her father said it had been natural for people to band together when something devastating happened, especially if many people died. He also said that it was nature to compete against each other when fewer things existed for them to survive off of…water, food, clothing, and so on. These people, they called themselves ‘clans’ as a whole and came up with silly names and colors and ranks and even a flag which they sometimes carried when they were showing off or so confident in their control that they feared no other clan. There were three clans that usually came through this particular area: Saving Steam, Endless Shore, and Verb Police. Saving Steam members weren’t very violent and often got the best picks ahead of the other two clans. Father said they used technology, items and gear more advanced than the simple hand tools he taught her to use, and fashioned these items from a movement that existed only a few decades ago called ‘steampunk’. As they had the best of the best, they were often the targets for ambushes and assassinations from the other clans. Verb Police were bullies, plain and simple, and preferred getting what they wanted with a show of force. They had cars, though…working vehicles that were kept in good shape by them and accented with flashing lights and loud sirens. They were the ones who took members of Saving Steam and Endless Shore when they could find them. Sometimes they put them into their cars and drove fast, going to their stronghold with their prisoners. She never saw those people again. Once in a while, whenever they felt that others were ignoring them or had lost fear and respect for them, they would take their prisoners to the large park in the center of the town and would take turns killing them with increasingly creative and horrific methods. Her father forbade her from going anywhere near the park when they drove through the streets, announcing what they were going to do. After he’d left she had gone to the very next one they announced. She hadn’t emerged from her hiding place for three days afterwards, terrified and unable to eat or sleep. That immediately put Verb Police at the top of the list of her greatest fears. 

Endless Shore was a different matter entirely. They hadn’t been around for very long, as she had only started seeing them within the past year. They took drastic steps to avoid Verb Police, but she’d often seen their members talking with members of Saving Steam. They weren’t fighting or arguing…well, most of the time at least…but were instead discussing things like item locations and methods of offence and defense. Her father had not been around to see this clan emerge, but she still knew what he would say about them. He would say they were naïve, a product of an age that had ended with the first Shift-storms. To freely give items and information that could ensure your survival? That was counter-productive at best, and lethal at worst. You were giving them something that you needed, whether it was canned rations that had been lost and forgotten in the back of a storeroom or the way to get through another’s defenses with little effort. He would have said that they wouldn’t last too long, that she would stop seeing them before winter was over. Winter had come and gone, spring and summer as well, and they were still coming into the city with more and more members. Her father had hardly been wrong, so this logical fallacy made her intensely curious about these newcomers and she tried to watch them as often as she could.

Looking into the sky, she realized how dark it had become from a combination of night falling and a normal thunderstorm moving in. She had certainly stayed out longer than she meant to, and with rainfall coming she’d need to set out the buckets to catch it all. The rainwater wasn’t immediately drinkable, but her father had put together a purifier with a carbon filter that made it safe for them to drink. Survival took precedence over everything else. Sliding through the marquee and into a small hole that lead to a space between the structure’s girders and roof, she made her way through a twisting path that eventually led into one of the projector rooms. From there she went downstairs and out a side door, propping it open with a brick so she could drag several large metal canisters under a clever structure her father built. It stretched between the wall of the theatre and an adjacent brick wall a few feet above her head, but barely a foot away from the opening of the canisters. The upper part acted like a dish, collecting all the water that fell from the sky. Funnels on the bottom of this collection plate allowed the water to flow neatly into the canisters so that little precious water was wasted. Later, once the rain had stopped and the containers were full, she would struggle to move them to a large trough where she would pour the water in and it would go through the filtration system to a huge plastic tank, where all their water was stored. The process was difficult but she’d learned how to do it without her father. It would simply take longer. 

She finished up just as the first few drops fell and was back in the building before she even got a little damp. The inside was dark, but she was used to it and knew her way around without needing light. “Light will attract unwanted visitors,” her father said, “…just like moths to a flame.” Survival, as always. So when she saw the faintest glow emitting from the seats in theatre 3, she was instantly on her guard. That meant that someone was in her sacred space, the one place she needed in order to feel safe in this very dangerous world. She picked up a sturdy fire ax, one of the many weapons stored in unobtrusive places throughout the theater (survival…safety and security, not letting others know where you are and making sure the ones who find out don’t live to tell the tale) and hefted it into a ready position at her shoulder. Breathing deeply, she stalked into the area, moving silently and willing that no one would see her before she had a chance to act and react. Staying low and remaining silent, she scanned the rows until she saw what was making the light. Someone had managed to get up into the projector room and set what she assumed was a flashlight near the magnifier for the camera so that the whole screen lit up with a soft white light. Nobody was actually there, either in the seats or on the stage. There was nowhere to hide…the curtains around the screen had been taken down long ago, used for clothing and warmth. With only a moment’s hesitation, she turned just as she felt the stranger’s presence at her back, lifting the fire ax and swinging it downward in a deadly arc, one that would cut straight into the soft area between the neck and shoulder (again, survival…a chance to hit two arteries is better than a chance to hit one). Involuntarily, she closed her eyes at the last moment before impact. Even though it was necessary for survival, she’d seen enough bloodshed that single day in the park and didn’t care to see it again.

She’d been bracing herself for the impact, the slight resistance and then tearing as the blade cut through skin and the weight shattered bones and the drenching arterial spray that would follow. Neither happened, though. When she opened her eyes she saw that her intruder had caught the ax…caught it in one hand, no less…merely an inch from his skin. She let go quickly, backing up until she stumbled in the slight downward slant of the aisle, falling hard and never taking her eyes off this stranger, the one who would now kill her, no doubt. She fully expected him to properly hold the ax, to bring it down on her as she had been prepared to do on him, but instead he merely shifted it so he could hold the handle, the ax head facing down to the floor at his side and the handle facing her. Finally chancing a look at his face, she saw the impossible…he was smiling.

“A very good swing there, Dian,” he said cheerfully. “If I’d been another second slower, we wouldn’t be able to talk to each other. I hear it’s a bit difficult to talk when you have a gaping hole at your neck.” The words were said with a slight chuckle, not taken seriously and obviously intended to make her relax. In fact, they had quite the opposite effect. He was not acting in the interest of survival at all, and it baffled and unnerved her to no end.

“W…wh…who…?” She was shaking, tripping over her words, trying to comprehend what this stranger could want with her. He was a stranger, too, someone she’d never seen anywhere in the town before. He appeared to be an older teenager, the chubbiness of youth still lingering a little in his cheeks. He had sun-gold hair that was tied back with a beaded leather thong, like the ones she’d seen once when her father took her through the ruins of a carnival. Cheaply made with the lowest-quality products, they were in no way useable for survival. His eyes were a dark gray, similar to the storm clouds outside, but they also seemed to shine eerily, as if lit from within. His face was open, relaxed, and friendly, and that lean body encased in a simple t-shirt, jeans, and long coat (trench coat, her father called it, a useless waste of material for this climate) was also relaxed, not readying for fight or flight. With a casual toss he threw the fire ax onto several of the seats in the aisle next to him and walked to her, crouching down once he approached and holding out his hand.

“I’m sorry for startling you, Dian. Your father sent me to find you some time ago. Even when he told me exactly where you were I still had trouble…your Trace must be amazing.” The words were said calmly, smoothly, as if this was normal everyday conversation for him. Dian, on the other hand, scrambled to grasp on the facts of a simply absurd statement. She had no clue where to start her objections.

“F-father…no…I’m sorry, he’s dead…he can’t have told you anything…” She took the most obvious lie first, and to her horror she felt herself choking up with unspent grief (a useless emotion if there ever was one).

“He left you, Dian, because he was dying,” he said quietly, his voice also punctuated with sadness. “We were friends a long time ago. He was my second in command for five months, back before the clans were called ‘clans’. He left us after his wife died, shortly after you were born.” He sighed, sitting on the floor across from her as if they were two friends having a nice chat. “I was surprised when he turned up at my stronghold a few years back. We hadn’t exactly kept in touch after he left. He spoke of you almost exclusively…he was proud of you, very proud, but he still regretted leaving me to raise you.”

“No…he said he loved it here, loved that it was just the two of us. You’re lying!” Angry tears sprung to her eyes and she hastily tried to wipe them away. This stranger had no right to intrude on her life, to intrude on her very memories.

“I’m sorry, Dian. I know you must hate me, but please trust me long enough to tell you something else. Your father loved you and wanted to shelter you, to keep you safe and happy. But you are special, Dian, extremely special. You see, he and I worked with several others back then to try and understand just how much the Shift-storms affected humans. The ones who survived a Shift event and the residual fallout would sometimes become something other than human. We called ourselves half-Trace and experimented with what we could and could not do…and believe me, I still haven’t found an absolute limit yet.”

“So you’re saying I’m like you?” She lifted a hand up, comparing the contrast between his glowing white skin and her own milk chocolate skin. “I don’t glow.” He chuckled, regaining a touch of humor at her astonishment.

“No. You’re not half-Trace. What you are is something that your father had never encountered before, something I’ve only encountered once before myself. You have the ability to manipulate both Trace and Shift energy, to interact with the data streams directly and produce effects that defy both logic and physics. You are a Trace Mage.”

“Trace…Mage?” Her thoughts collided with each other, causing a mental train wreck. He was speaking in tongues as well as lies, and she simply couldn’t take any more of it. “No…please stop…just get out of here! I don’t want you in my home anymore! You’re lying about everything, I know you are! Father is dead and I’m just trying to survive! There is nothing else!!!” She staggered up again, stumbling backwards a little on the slanted floor. Before she could fall again, the stranger was up with startling speed and caught her forearm, steadying her and preventing her from moving further away.

“Listen to me. Think for a moment. You sneak around very well, but your father always told you to take a breath and concentrate on nothing other than being silent and unnoticeable, didn’t he?” She couldn’t answer, but he was right and quoted her father almost word for word. “You have strength beyond what your frame would allow. You simply concentrate on what needs to be done and you are able to do it, no matter what you would naturally be able to do. You have a perfect memory. You even have a sense for danger, to know when something or someone would lead you to harm well before anything happens.”

“So what? I’ve spent most of my life learning how to survive, listening to father and doing what needs to be done. There’s nothing amazing or special about that…isn’t that how survival works? Learning to do things beyond your ability and working at it until it’s no longer a burden? I simply learned how to take care of myself!” He sighed, shaking his head, a look of frustration finally appearing on his face.

“Fine…how about this? The first Shift-storms occurred almost fifty years ago, right?” They had…she remembered the history her father taught her. “And you were born within a few months of a Shift-storm close to where your father and mother lived.” Truth. History. “Dian, you should be a middle-aged woman by now…you should show signs that you have lived for fifty years. I know you are naïve, but I also know that you are not stupid. In your fifty years you have only aged about eight years. A single year of growth for you took around six-and-a-quarter normal years to happen. You are still a child physically and mentally.”

“Wha…are you calling me childish?!? I haven’t been a child since father and I found the first scavengers.”

“Yes, you are still a child. You are perhaps not innocent, but it is clear that your thought processes aren’t mature yet. Did you ever find it strange that your father grew older and older while you stayed almost the same?”

“I…” She hadn’t noticed, actually. Although she had a general grasp of time passage, it never seemed important to her. It never seemed important to her because   
it never seemed important to her father. To live day-by-day, to focus on survival…had she truly spent fifty years in an eternal childhood? The reality and truth of this stranger’s words finally hit her and they hit hard, sending her straight into uncontrollable crying, her whole body shaking with the force of the sobs. She cried for so much time lost, for refusing to see the truth, for the loss of her unknown mother, and for the overwhelming grief she’d buried long ago when she found her father’s farewell note. The stranger finally pulled her to him and picked her up, holding her to him, guiding her head to cry into his shoulder and rubbing her back gently, rocking her very slightly. 

“Shh…it will be okay, Dian. You’ve survived long enough. Now it’s time for you to live. Let’s go home.” She nodded, holding tightly to him, letting him comfort her. He walked out of the theatre and through the lobby to the front door, hitting the hidden catch that would open the doors so they could get out. The rain was still pouring and they were soaked within moments, but neither took much notice. Walking swiftly, he rounded a few corners and met with two people under an awning…one member of Saving Steam and one member of Endless Shore, working together with this stranger.

“Everything good, Leon?”

“Yes…I got what I came for. And it’s Lysim, not Leon.” The response wasn’t sharp, so it was obviously some sort of running joke between them. The four of them piled into a car, mostly hidden from any others with tarp and other camouflage, and in moments they were driving. Dian had finally cried herself out, but Lysim held her close just the same. Sleep was starting to take over, and in the last few minutes she was awake her mind drifted onto other tangents. 

Survival. That had been the key word since day one. She’d lived by that code every day of her life. She’d never needed anyone other than her father, and when he had gone she relied on herself. Survival. Now she was sitting in the lap of a stranger and being driven to his stronghold, and she was doing so without protest. Her father wouldn’t have approved…but then, he did the same thing. Were the laws of survival really that mutable? Could trusting this stranger and these clans help her survive? As she finally drifted off, she finally felt a kind of peace she hadn’t felt since her father left. She was going home.

**Author's Note:**

> As this is a Twenty-One Words challenge, here is the word list: Doll, Hurried, Applied, City, Sink, Doing, Fox, Movement, Bicycle, That, Onto, Seven, Wooden, Neighbor, Teacher, Passage, Box, Page, Check, Pictured, negative


End file.
